Like most Coloradans, Dave is a bit obsessive about his outdoor sports. A bit. Hobbled by shoulder surgery, he had recently switched from obsessing about rock climbing (a spreadsheet lists the 550 different routes he’s climbed at one favorite crag, Mt. Arapiles in Australia, despite living almost 9,000 miles away) to hiking. If that sounds like a step down, consider that between January and early September, he had climbed Mt. Sanitas, near his north Boulder home, 224 times. But that was just the start, he had also decided to hike the so-called “Centennial 13’ers,” the hundred highest peaks in Colorado. (He’d already done the 14’ers.) And now, I was along for the ride. Armed with Gerry Roach’s Colorado’s Thirteeners, Dave had plotted an arduous and complex route that would allow us to bag four of the necessary high 13’ers in the San Juans in a single long weekend...

Like most Coloradans, Dave is a bit obsessive about his outdoor sports. A bit. Hobbled by shoulder surgery, he had recently switched from obsessing about rock climbing (a spreadsheet lists the 550 different routes he’s climbed at one favorite crag, Mt. Arapiles in Australia, despite living almost 9,000 miles away) to hiking. If that sounds like a step down, consider that between January and early September, he had climbed Mt. Sanitas, near his north Boulder home, 224 times. But that was just the start, he had also decided to hike the so-called “Centennial 13’ers,” the hundred highest peaks in Colorado. (He’d already done the 14’ers.) And now, I was along for the ride. Armed with Gerry Roach’s Colorado’s Thirteeners, Dave had plotted an arduous and complex route that would allow us to bag four of the necessary high 13’ers in the San Juans in a single long weekend...